Re: [jamboost] Re: Boost.Build and SCons

From: Vladimir Prus (ghost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-11-24 10:33:23

On Wednesday 24 November 2004 18:24, David Abrahams wrote:

> > 1. Initially, bjam will invoke SCons at the lowest level (creating
> > SCons Nodes instead of bjam's targets).
> >
> > 2. If that works out OK, we'd need to consider how to mix Python and
> > jam language. Say, so that one could write new tool in Python.
> >
> > 3. After that, we can gradually move Boost.Build code to
> > Python. Given that the languages are very similar, this should not
> > be very hard.
>
> I heartily support this approach! In fact, parsing and interpreting
> Jam code using Python at some point shouldn't be too difficult either,
> should we decide we'd like to do that.

Of course.

> I have to say that this would rekindle my enthusiasm for work on these
> projects, provided we could also rededicate ourselves to complete and
> understandable documentation at all levels of the project. That has
> historically been a weakness of both Boost.Build and Scons, and
> merging them without conscious attention to it could easily make the
> problem worse.

Definitely. I think Boost.Build V2 user documentation is not that bad now, but 
we'd need to explicitly take care about lower level docs.

> > The biggest question is if it's reasonable to require Python for
> > Boost.Build 2.0. I think that such idea will not find must
> > opposition from Boost developers (there's a lot of use of Python
> > already), but the question is if Boost.Build + SCons will be stable
> > enough in time for 2.0.
>
> The deadline for BB2.0 being... when?

I'll do my best to finish Boost.Python and installing in a couple of week, 
which would allow to replace V1 with V2. I think at least couple of months 
will be necessary then for optimisation and cleanup. That gives... first 
quarter of 2005.

- Volodya